| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: with women and buffoons! Do not tell me that the enterprise is
impossible. Have not the Mercenaries already possessed Rhegium and
other fortified places in Italy? Who is to prevent you? Hamilcar is
away; the people execrate the rich; Gisco can do nothing with the
cowards who surround him. Command them! Carthage is ours; let us fall
upon it!"
"No!" said Matho, "the curse of Moloch weighs upon me. I felt it in
her eyes, and just now I saw a black ram retreating in a temple."
Looking around him he added: "But where is she?"
Then Spendius understood that a great disquiet possessed him, and did
not venture to speak again.
Salammbo |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling:
THE LEGEND OF EVIL
This is the sorrowful story,
THE ENGLISH FLAG
Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro,
"CLEARED"
Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
AN IMPERIAL RESCRIPT
Verses 1889-1896 |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: which is an apology for everything (in literature and the drama).
Happily Rosamond did not think of committing any desperate act:
she plaited her fair hair as beautifully as usual, and kept herself
proudly calm. Her most cheerful supposition was that her aunt
Bulstrode had interfered in some way to hinder Lydgate's visits:
everything was better than a spontaneous indifference in him.
Any one who imagines ten days too short a time--not for falling
into leanness, lightness, or other measurable effects of passion, but--
for the whole spiritual circuit of alarmed conjecture and disappointment,
is ignorant of what can go on in the elegant leisure of a young
lady's mind.
Middlemarch |
